Wall Street Zen Downgrades Teradyne (NASDAQ:TER) to Sell

Teradyne (NASDAQ:TER) was downgraded by stock analysts at Wall Street Zen from a “hold” rating to a “sell” rating in a note issued to investors on Saturday.

Several other brokerages have also recently weighed in on TER. Stifel Nicolaus upped their price target on Teradyne from $85.00 to $100.00 and gave the company a “hold” rating in a research report on Thursday. Cowen reiterated a “buy” rating on shares of Teradyne in a research report on Wednesday. KeyCorp reiterated a “sector weight” rating on shares of Teradyne in a research report on Thursday, April 17th. Cantor Fitzgerald set a $105.00 price target on Teradyne and gave the company an “overweight” rating in a research report on Tuesday, June 24th. Finally, UBS Group reiterated a “buy” rating and set a $130.00 price target (up from $120.00) on shares of Teradyne in a research report on Thursday. Three equities research analysts have rated the stock with a sell rating, five have assigned a hold rating, ten have assigned a buy rating and one has assigned a strong buy rating to the stock. Based on data from MarketBeat, the stock presently has a consensus rating of “Hold” and a consensus target price of $114.44.

Teradyne Stock Performance

Shares of Teradyne stock opened at $104.16 on Friday. Teradyne has a 52-week low of $65.77 and a 52-week high of $144.16. The stock’s 50-day simple moving average is $89.70 and its 200 day simple moving average is $92.48. The stock has a market capitalization of $16.71 billion, a P/E ratio of 36.04, a P/E/G ratio of 2.19 and a beta of 1.72.

Teradyne (NASDAQ:TER) last announced its quarterly earnings results on Tuesday, July 29th. The company reported $0.57 earnings per share for the quarter, beating the consensus estimate of $0.54 by $0.03. Teradyne had a return on equity of 18.16% and a net margin of 16.59%. The firm had revenue of $651.80 million for the quarter, compared to analysts’ expectations of $649.02 million. During the same period in the prior year, the business posted $0.86 earnings per share. The company’s revenue was down 10.7% on a year-over-year basis. Equities research analysts forecast that Teradyne will post 3.88 EPS for the current fiscal year.

Teradyne announced that its Board of Directors has initiated a stock buyback program on Monday, April 28th that permits the company to repurchase $1.00 billion in shares. This repurchase authorization permits the company to buy up to 8.1% of its shares through open market purchases. Shares repurchase programs are usually an indication that the company’s board of directors believes its shares are undervalued.

Insider Transactions at Teradyne

In other Teradyne news, CEO Gregory Stephen Smith sold 554 shares of the company’s stock in a transaction that occurred on Wednesday, July 30th. The stock was sold at an average price of $105.73, for a total value of $58,574.42. Following the completion of the sale, the chief executive officer owned 97,547 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $10,313,644.31. This represents a 0.56% decrease in their ownership of the stock. The sale was disclosed in a filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available through the SEC website. 0.16% of the stock is currently owned by corporate insiders.

Institutional Trading of Teradyne

Institutional investors have recently made changes to their positions in the stock. Berbice Capital Management LLC boosted its stake in shares of Teradyne by 200.0% during the first quarter. Berbice Capital Management LLC now owns 300 shares of the company’s stock valued at $25,000 after purchasing an additional 200 shares during the period. Strategic Investment Solutions Inc. IL bought a new position in shares of Teradyne during the fourth quarter valued at approximately $34,000. Manchester Capital Management LLC raised its holdings in shares of Teradyne by 44.7% during the first quarter. Manchester Capital Management LLC now owns 453 shares of the company’s stock valued at $37,000 after acquiring an additional 140 shares in the last quarter. Brooklyn Investment Group raised its holdings in shares of Teradyne by 189.9% during the first quarter. Brooklyn Investment Group now owns 461 shares of the company’s stock valued at $38,000 after acquiring an additional 302 shares in the last quarter. Finally, Steph & Co. bought a new position in shares of Teradyne during the second quarter valued at approximately $43,000. Hedge funds and other institutional investors own 99.77% of the company’s stock.

Teradyne Company Profile

Teradyne, Inc designs, develops, manufactures, and sells automated test systems and robotics products worldwide. It operates through four segments; Semiconductor Test, System Test, Robotics, and Wireless Test. The Semiconductor Test segment offers products and services for wafer level and device package testing of semiconductor devices in automotive, industrial, communications, consumer, smartphones, cloud, computer and electronic game, and other applications.